I had to repost this chapter because of some tiny embarrassing mistakes :-). (I wrote and published this chapter after my "Schlado", so please forgive me).

The weather I tried to describe in the second part, is exactly the same as it is in HH(D) right now-Mary G. You know what I mean- I don't have the slightest clue if Louisiana weather can be like this at any time of the year but... well, this is my fantasy.

Feel free to review! That will encourage me.

Chapter 3: "It's much easier than all that"

Cordelia woke up to the sound of singing birds. She opened her eyes, looked around and everything was so peaceful and calm. Clean and bright. White sheets and walls, fresh cool air, orange sunlight kissing the furniture and floor. Cordelia took a look onto the bed beside her. It was empty. "Why didn't she wake me?" Cordelia thought while getting up. She still wore the t-shirt and shorts she wore when she came into the room yesterday night. She walked into the bathroom. She didn't expect Misty to be there, yet she was disappointed when was proved right. Not only disappointed. In a way already annoyed, angry. Cordelia used the toilet, and then washed her face with ice-cold water to get rid of the last tiredness written on her face. She looked to herself in the mirror. "If she wants to be alone, let her be!" she said to herself. "It's obvious that she wants to, otherwise she would have waked you. Let her be!" She nodded to herself and left the room to get prepared for the day. In the hallway she took in the smell of coffee and thought how good this would be. Cordelia quickly entered her room at the other end of the hallway to get dressed. After that she almost skipped down the stairway and met Zoe in the kitchen.

"Good Morning" Cordelia said and smiled at Zoe who gave her an empathic smile in response. "Good morning. You want some breakfast? Fried eggs?" Cordelia took a look into the pan on the oven and grimaced in disgust when she saw the eggs there. Hopefully Zoe didn't saw her face, but Cordelia couldn't hide her reaction to the thought of semi-liquid egg yolk." No, thank you. But if you don't mind I'll share a mug of coffee with you." "Sure!" Zoe said, poured some coffee into a big mug and handed it over to her supreme. Cordelia took it but Zoe didn't let go. "How's Misty?" she asked quietly. Cordelia didn't say anything, just bit her bottom lip to fight the tears filling her eyes. "Sit down." She suggested, gesturing towards the kitchen table. Both women sat down opposite of each other in full attention towards the one in front of them. One trying to find the right words to say, the other one carefully listening. "First of all thank you for managing all this…" Cordelia said gesturing into the air, meaning the academy. "I'm vice-headmistress. It's my job" Zoe answered. Cordelia closed her hands around her coffee mug with the back of her thumbs touching her lips in a steady rhythm. "It was not fair of me to just leave you alone. I mean… I didn't even call you. You only knew what was going on when we came back from hos…." "You're avoiding the topic!" Cordelia was interrupted. "How is Misty?" Zoe asked again.

Cordelia shrugged. "I don't know. I don't even know where she is at this very moment. She withdraws from me. But at the same time I got the feeling she wants me to be near her. And when I'm near her, she keeps…. acting… indifferent, arrogant…almost… ass-hole-like."

"What makes you think this way?"

"She's….just not nice. She doesn't want me to touch her. She must have left the bedroom early this morning without waking me…"

"What do you expect, Cordelia? She's been in hell for half a year. Jesus, I don't know how I will behave if I survived it."

Cordelia shook her head. "It's not that. Old Misty is somewhere deep inside her. I already thought of some kind of psychological post traumatic treatment or maybe if I look hard enough I will find something in that old spell books to help her. She's desperately fighting to get out. I saw it."

"What did you see? How long did you know Misty, before she lost her soul and turned to ashes? A couple of weeks? Not even as long as that, I think!"

Cordelia put her mug on the table. She covered her face with her hands and took a deep breath. While breathing out, she let her hands slip down her face and finally clasped her hands, her chin resting on her thumbs. She looked Zoe deep in the eyes, and the younger one finally understood. She lowered her head, smiled a very small smile and said: "You fell head over heels for her! Cordelia!" Zoe reached out for one of Cordelia's wrist to get an answer, but the older one just burst out in tears, which in a way was an answer to her. Cordelia turned her head, one of her hands holding Zoe's the other one still covering her mouth, to not cry out loud. She saw the sunlight slowly disappearing behind some very grey clouds outside the window. Wind shaking the trees. It was the total opposite of the weather that waked her up half an hour ago.

Zoe let her supreme cry for a couple of minutes. Her hand almost bruised by the way Cordelia held it. She got up from her chair, not letting go of Cordelia's hand and walked over to her. "Hey!" she said to get the older woman's attention. Cordelia looked up to her. "You want to hear my suggestion? Leave the psychiatrist, leave the magic…" Zoe crouched down to be even with Cordelia. "I think it is much easier than all that!" She said and left the room, leaving Cordelia alone.


Thunder ripped through the air. Stormy wind was blowing, but not a single raindrop was falling from the sky yet. Misty turned her head up looking at the dark clouds above her. Her lips and fingertips already turned blue from the cool air. Her nose was runny and the skin around it was quite sore of her hand wiping over the wet skin again and again. She was thinking to herself.

When she woke up this morning, it was still dark outside. She had felt Cordelia's body much too close beside her. She knew that she was supposed to feel comforted, but she didn't. She wanted to be alone, far away from any human being. So she decided to leave the house. When she heard the first thunder in the sky, she felt relieved. As if heavens understood how she felt. Cold, sore, anything but happy.

She heard a little chirp next to her and turned her head to where the sound was coming from. In the meadow, next to her sat a little sparrow. Misty closed her eyes and suddenly flashbacks of that fatal situation when something quite similar as that, had her being burned on the pyre, hit her vision. "His eyes on the sparrow….why should it stay alive, while you had to die twice? Isn't your life much more valuable than the sparrow's? It has got no right to live on." The chirping noise of the bird turned louder in Misty's ears up to a point where she couldn't stand it "No, I don't want to kill a living creature! I bring back life! I bring back life! I bring back life!" She clutched her hands on both sides of her face to cover her ears and closed her eyes. In her senses was a sudden change of a chirping bird, burning skin, dissected frog, chirping bird, burning skin, dissected frog…."I bring back life! I bring back life! I bring take life! I take life! I take life" Her thoughts became a whisper, which turned into spoken words ending up in desperate scream when her right arm reached out to grab….

"Hey!"

Cordelia froze at the sound of Misty's voice right behind her. "How did she get in?" she thought to herself. "The door to the greenhouse is locked…" Cordelia had to admit to herself that she was scared of Misty. She slowly turned around. Her fear was suddenly gone what she saw Misty in front of her. Skin almost translucent, blue veins marked her front, chin and neck, her eyelids red from the cold wind ravishing them. She radiated chill. Cordelia didn't say anything until she saw Misty's right hand covered in sticky dark blood. "What did you do?!" she screamed and looked up to Misty's face whose eyes began to roll back into her head before she collapsed into Cordelia's arms.

"What the hell did you do?!" Misty heard Cordelia say. She was lying on the muddy floor of the greenhouse. Cordelia sat next to her holding a garden hose in her hands washing away the red from her hand.

"I killed a bird…" Misty said her voice just above a whisper.

"What?" Cordelia asked and looked at her in shock.

"I ki…bir"

"Well….."Cordelia said as she examined Misty's palm. "I think you won't need stiches"